## Manual way of editing the properties files

As Risk comes by default in English language only, it may be hard to understand by non-english speaking people.

However, it's an open source project and you are very welcome to translate it into your mother tongue - or any other language you speak (or write) well. This helps non-english people to have a better game experience and thus a better time playing Risk.

Translation is very easy: You just have to translate a simple text file of the following form:

    ...
    mainmenu.newgame=New Game
    mainmenu.startserver=Start Server
    ...

the translated german version would look like

    ...
    mainmenu.newgame=Neues Spiel
    mainmenu.startserver=Server starten
    ...

Easy, isn't it?

To translate Risk into your language, just get the sources and make a copy of the file `translation/Risk.properties` and rename it to `Risk_<language code>.properties` (Replace `<language code>` with the 2-digit code of your language, e.g. "en" for english, "de" for german or "fr" for french).

Now just open the new `Risk_xx.properties` file in your favorite text editor and translate the strings in there.

Additional to the `Risk.properties` there is a file called `DefaultMaps.properties` which contains the translation of continent and country names, which can be translated as well.

### Translating maps

Standard maps (whole world) are translated via the `DefaultMaps.properties` file. It it possible to translate single maps without using the DefaultMaps file.

Just create a new file in the `maps/` folder, called `<map name>_<language code>.properties`. For example, the german translation file for the `simple.map` map file would be called `simple_de.properties`.